By Manny Frishberg, JTNews Correspondent
Can one person change the world? Can a single congregation? If the goal is to eliminate homeless shelters and house everyone in the Seattle area that needs it, then probably not. But for a family living in Tent City, the moveable, self-directed homeless encampment that found itself in Temple Beth Am’s parking lot for three months last summer, the answer is a resounding, “Yes.”
Of the estimated 8,000 homeless in Seattle on any given night, some 3,200 of them are families with children, according to Alvin Sion, head of Beth Am’s Social Action Committee. And, he added, most of those parents are working regular jobs. What has kept them in tents and shelters is the high cost of housing- particularly the combined total of first-and-last month’s rent, along with security and cleaning deposits. So his committee has suggested that Beth Am pay their move-in expenses.
In a proposal to the congregation’s board, they quoted Maimonides, from the Mishnah’s, Laws Concerning Gifts to the Poor, teaching that “You are commanded to provide the needy with whatever they lack. If they lack clothing, you must clothe them. If they lack household goods, you must provide them.”
“Isaiah and Mica say very strongly that services are okay and buildings are okay,” Sion said, “but really what God wants, what you need to do to be righteous, is to help the disadvantaged. So we felt it wasn’t just doing a nice thing. We felt it was doing something that was a religious imperative for us.”
Their first idea, said SAC member Sally Kinney, was to try to purchase a house in the area which they could rent out to a family in need of housing. That, however, proved economically unfeasible, so they began to search for alternatives.
The idea actually took root even before Tent City came to Beth Am, said Sion. Rabbi Jonathan Singer came to the temple’s Social Action Committee to encourage them to start a movement within the temple community to start helping the homeless.
“Along the way, the Social Action Committee also got very concerned with the issues of homelessness and poverty in this country, but especially in King County,” Sion explained.
One outcome was a Social and Economic Justice Forum, or what Kinney referred to as a “Social Injustice Forum.”
“David Bloom, who was at that time the staff director of the Interfaith Task Force on Homelessness, was really a great mentor to us,” Kinney said. “He gave us a lot of information and statistics on homelessness.”
One of the big gaps in area resources is for families with children.
“There are growing numbers of the working poor – families with children – who simply have no place to go,” Kinney added. “They’re living in their car. They just can’t get housing. They’re working but they just don’t make enough to get into a place.”
Sion said that getting to know some of the people in Tent City while they were staying on the temple grounds helped to cement the idea in the minds of the congregants.
Two other questions came up in the planning process that eventually came to the Temple Beth Am board as a whole – should they provide interest-free loans, in the manner of the Hebrew Free Loan Society, or should the money come in the form of a grant? Sion said they settled on a grant of up to $1,000 per family for a simple reason:
“We decided the people that we’re helping have enough trouble with bureaucracy. We didn’t want to be a credit agency, running after them, saying, ‘Hey, pay it back.’ A grant is much cleaner,” he said.
Another question that arose was whether to limit assistance to fellow Jews.
“We all felt, no, this would be too limiting, because poverty isn’t based on religion,” Sion said. “Also, we felt that Jews have to be part of the community of the living. Jeremiah said this during the Babylonian exile – he wrote a letter to the exiles saying, ‘be part of the community, strengthen people. That’s how you are going to survive.’
“I thought it was very important for a Jewish organization to be seen as part of the community – as a community member that pitches in to help deal with community problems of poverty and homelessness.”
Understanding that the Temple Beth Am community does not have the resources to provide case management services or to evaluate the potential clients, the H2R program is partnering with the United Way of Greater Seattle and a local agency called Mutual Interest. The agencies have the experience and program staffs in place to screen the applicants, make sure they have training in financial management and living skills, and can afford to stay in their homes once they are renters, as well as do follow-ups with them to provide continuing support.
In February, the temple board officially endorsed the H2R program as a regular, ongoing project, and a fundraising brunch was held on August 15 to get the program moving. Money from H2R will be sent directly to the landlords when renters show their leases or rental contracts, and the landlords agree to send any refund checks back to the temple to be recycled into the program.
“It is a possibility,” Sion said, “that as we go on, we can plant seeds in other congregations [to take up similar programs]. It would be nice.”
“A large number of members of [social service agencies] are Jewish but they participate as individuals, rather than as members of congregations,” Kinney said. “We here at Temple Beth Am would like to start people realizing that what they’re doing is a very Jewish thing.”